by Jean Little
Min nodded and Toby blurted out that he had been planning to do just that. Jess’s face softened and it grew almost warm as Miss Hazlitt launched into the story of their finding her marooned on her counter.
After that, they all began to enjoy themselves. Hearing tales of Jess’s childhood fascinated Min. She began to feel secure, no longer worried about getting into trouble. She helped get the “tea” ready. It was a large, delicious meal with lots of choices — slices of homemade bread and butter, cheese, ham, a bean salad, hard-boiled eggs that Miss Hazlitt had helped her devil, raisin buns, sardines and something strange called marmite.
But she should have realized that Dr. Jessica Hart was not one to let them off so lightly.
The minute they were in the van, her first question came at them fast and hard. “What were you two up to out here? You told me Martha was taking you tobogganing, Toby, but Martha says it was your idea, not hers, and you only asked for a ride as far as Mabel’s drive.”
Min sat, head down, miserable and mute. A cold fear spiralled up from an iceberg hidden deep within her. Why didn’t Toby answer? It had been his idea to get Martha’s help.
Toby coughed nervously. Then he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Jess,” he mumbled at last. “Min and I —”
Then Min’s courage returned and she was inspired. She burst out, “It was my idea really, not Tobe’s. I had never ridden downhill on a toboggan, not once, until today. I wanted to try it and I nagged at him to arrange it. It was stupendous!”
Nobody spoke for a long minute. In that small silence, Min realized that she had blown it totally. She hated talking, let alone nagging at a boy. Jess would guess she was lying. Why hadn’t she left it to Toby?
Then Jess laughed. “I love you both,” she said. “And you have a right to make private plans. Tobogganing is fun. I’m glad you went for it. But I don’t want you doing something dangerous behind my back and I don’t appreciate being told lies. Next time, just say you can’t explain. Thank fortune you had a cell phone so I could find you. I don’t see why it was such a secret, and I suspect there is more to the story, but never mind. Next time, just tell where you are going and we’ll forget today.”
Min and Toby sighed in unison. Min bit the thumb of her mitten to keep from shrieking with relief.
“You’re on,” Toby said. “We’re really sorry we worried you. Right, Min?”
“It led to my seeing Miss Hazlitt for the first time in years,” Jess said, turning into her driveway. “She was one of my favourite people when I was a child. She helped get me out of trouble many a time. My adoptive parents were over protective and apt to pile on too many rules. I made up my mind to try not to do likewise, now that I have a child myself.”
By now, Min was clutching her braid so tightly her hand ached. When she heard the last few words, she let her fingers uncurl very slightly and she began to breathe normally again.
Toby, looking back at her, saw her face go pink and her mouth widen in a slow smile. As their eyes met, he must have seen how frightened she had been before Jess’s words let them off the hook. “Hey, Rap, don’t sweat it,” he said. “Jess’s bark is not that bad, and she never bites — not hard enough to make you bleed, anyway.”
“Yeah, I know,” Min said. But her shaking voice betrayed her.
Jess was halfway out of the van, but she swung around and peered at Min. Then she reached her right hand back between the seats and grabbed Min’s knee-cap. “I think you must have forgotten my promise,” she said. “I’ll say it again and add a new bit: You will never leave me unless you wish to go, Min, and even if you decide you can’t stand life with me another minute, I’ll fight to hold onto you. You’ve been with me for just over a week and already I feel you’ve been mine always. I don’t say such things lightly, either. Ask Tobe.”
Before Min could take in the full sense of what she had just been told, Jess was out of the van and heading for the house.
Wordlessly, Min and Toby followed her, to be met by a leaping Cassie, a meowing Maude and no sign of Emily.
Before even undoing her coat, Min gathered her puppy up and clasped her to her chest. Cassie bounced and wiggled and licked and gave small yelps of ecstasy.
Toby laughed and bent to stroke Maude, who did her best to trip him up in her purring circles.
Jess searched for and found Emily in a dark corner of the bathroom, huddled behind the toilet. Her tail waved when Jess crouched to pet her, but she did not make a sound. And when Jess drew her out and lifted her into her arms, she did not look at any of them, but beyond them into some distant space. “Such a pretty Lady Emily,” Jess crooned. “Such a beautiful Pekingese. You will feel happier soon, wait and see.”
Emily ducked her head down and gave Jess’s thumb one lightning lick. Then she went on pretending she did not know they had come home.
“How long will it take her to learn that we’re her friends?” Toby wondered aloud.
Min said nothing, but she remembered hearing her various foster parents say, “She doesn’t trust us. How long will she go on like this?”
“However long it takes, her trust will be worth winning,” Jess said, looking up. And, for a split second, her smiling eyes met Min’s.
“After that tea, none of us needs any supper,” Jess said a few minutes later. “But I have to go to the store. And my friends Pauline and Terry have invited me in for a celebratory drink. You probably don’t remember, but tomorrow is New Year’s Day.”
They stared at her. She was absolutely right about their having forgotten.
“I won’t stay long. Take good care of the menagerie,” Jess called, pulling her gloves on.
Toby nodded and Min said, “Of course.”
After she had left the house, though, a silence fell between them. Min was thinking of Miss Hazlitt and Daisy. Emily was probably Daisy. As a matter of fact, Emily was almost certainly Daisy. The veterinarian had said she had puncture wounds in her back, as though she had been bitten by another animal. That awful man in the goggles had probably saved her when he tried to run the coyote dog down. How terrifying the whole experience must have been for her!
But she’s mine, Min thought. I found her.
Miss Hazlitt found her first, another inner voice answered sternly. And you have Cassie.
Stubbornly, Min shut her mind against the thought. Cassie or no Cassie, Emily needed her. Emily was hers by right.
13
Telling Toby
“WHY DO YOU CLUTCH YOUR BRAID that way?” Toby’s voice demanded suddenly, breaking in on Min’s troublesome thoughts.
She gripped her braid more fiercely than before. “None of your business,” she flashed back, glaring at him. Why didn’t he go listen to his iPod or play with his PSP?
“Cool your jets, Rapunzel,” Toby said. “It was just a question, not an accusation.”
Min seethed. She searched her mind for a cutting remark to hurl back at him, but her mind was like a frozen computer keyboard. It would not respond no matter how hard she hit the keys.
“You know,” Toby began, lying down on the floor with his hands behind his head, “I still haven’t figured out where Jess picked you up. One minute I had this godmother with no kids, and overnight she gets herself a daughter. And it seems she’s known you for years. What I don’t get is, where’ve you been hidden away all this time?”
Min did not move so much as an eyelash. It must puzzle him. In his place, she’d be driven crazy with questions. He’d been incredibly polite not to demand an explanation long ago.
But what should she say?
If he had pressed her, she would not have said anything at all. But he simply waited. His face showed he was interested, but willing to let the subject drop if that was how she wanted it.
“I never heard of you either.” Min dodged answering for a few seconds longer. She had let go of her braid, but the minute she began to talk she reached for it again. Her past was not his affair, and yet she knew a lot about his past — private t
hings about him as a baby and everything. Jess had told her right at the start. Why hadn’t Jess also told Toby the story of Min’s being abandoned?
Min thought she knew why.
Jess had left it up to her to tell or not to tell. The story of Toby’s birth had nothing shameful or hurtful in it. But her story was different. He had been loved; she had been thrown away.
“I’m a foundling, if you must know,” she said finally, in a voice just above a whisper.
Toby sat up so fast he startled her. “Like Oliver Twist?” he asked, his eyes bright with excitement.
Min had seen the movie but it took her a moment to remember. “I guess,” she said. “Only he was a baby, right? And his mother took him to the poorhouse or wherever? I was about three when I was found.”
Toby was leaning toward her, as though she were telling him a spellbinding tale. She had not thought of it like that but, all of a sudden, it became filled with suspense to her too — suspense and sadness and a puzzle nobody would ever be able to solve. And, just maybe, a happy ending.
“Where did she find you?” he asked in a voice close to a whisper.
“She didn’t. I was left in a washroom at the CNE,” she told him. “This woman — her name was Shirl — took me to the washroom and, while I was peeing, she just took off. She wasn’t my mother. She told me so herself.”
“When you were younger than my sisters?”
“That’s right.”
There was no glimmer of laughter in his face. He was clearly deeply shocked. He also looked furious, his face flushed, his blue eyes blazing.
He jumped to his feet and glared down at her. “How could she?” he yelled. “How could anybody do such an awful thing? It’s evil!”
Min gazed up at him. She felt as though a tight rope had been knotted around her heart for years, without her being aware of it, and now Toby’s fury had cut through its strangling cords. Nobody had ever said before that what Shirl had done to her had been wicked, but she had always known it. It was not her own fault. Jess had made that clear. But even she had never put the blame squarely on the woman who had deserted a small child, leaving her with no friend, no food, no protector, no place to turn.
Tears slid down Min’s face without her even noticing them. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes. It was a bad thing to do. I was so lonely and so frightened. And, before she took me there, she cut all my hair off as short as … as a dog’s. It was practically as short as Maude’s.”
He looked at the long braid that she now held in both hands, as though he were seeing it for the first time. “Why would she do that?” he whispered.
“I think … I think maybe it was so the man we lived with wouldn’t know me … if there was a picture in the paper. He was worse than her, way worse.”
“I see,” he said. “I get it now.”
And she thought perhaps he really did.
“They put me into foster homes,” she told him, unable to stop now that she had started. She summed up the rest of her life in a hurry. “The foster parents kept giving me back. Mrs. Willis was going to find me another placement when Jess swept in and kidnapped me right out of the Children’s Aid office. She said she knew all about being abandoned because it had happened to her, and then she brought me home. She’s a friend of my caseworker and she knew my first foster mother too. I think she’s worked for the Children’s Aid before. Was she a foster parent for sick babies or something …?”
The corners of Toby’s lips quirked up. “Yeah,” he said. “She took in babies they thought might die. She took me for a while.” Then, “You mean, she just snatched you without any warning?” He started to laugh and dropped back into Jess’s chair. “I wish I’d seen that,” he said.
“I met her long ago when I was in the hospital, and I’ve seen her off and on, ever since. But I sure wasn’t expecting her to do what she did,” Min said, grinning in spite of herself. “Then, the day after she yanked me out of Mrs. Willis’s office, you showed up.”
“No wonder you looked at me like I was Harry Potter’s Muggle cousin,” Toby said. Then his face sobered. “Jess was not just abandoned,” he told her, in a low voice. He was undoing his runners and lacing them tighter while he talked. “Her mum was a drunk and she wasn’t taking proper care of Jess. So Jess’s grandfather found them and said he’d take her. And her mum said, “What’ll you give me for her?” And she finally handed Jess over for a case of beer. Then he took Jess home with him, but he couldn’t look after her himself. And she was abused or something. I don’t know the details, but she ended up being adopted.”
Min stood up and ran out of the room. Toby half-rose to follow her and then sat down to wait as he heard her slam the bathroom door. Behind the door, Min was doubled up over the toilet, gagging. She thought, at first, that the wonderful English tea was going to come up, but it didn’t. She was crying at the thought of a little baby girl being sold by her own mother. At least Shirl had not been related to Min herself. She had told Min so more than once.
The gagging ended at last, without the food coming back up. She spat sour phlegm into the basin and splashed cold water onto her face. When she got herself collected, she scrubbed her cheeks with a towel and took a deep shaking breath.
Then she heard Toby coming slowly through the kitchen, clearly anxious and uncertain what to do.
“Hey, you okay in there?” he asked.
She opened the door and faced him. “Come on,” she said, leading the way back to the living room. The Christmas tree would cheer them both up.
“I’m fine,” she said when they were safely back there. “Let’s play crokinole or watch a video maybe.”
“Now you’re talking,” he answered. “I’ll go get out the board. Jess almost always beats me. I need practice and we don’t have a board at our house. Baxter asked me if I didn’t think it was a bit old-fashioned. I told him it was Canadian, like Trivial Pursuit, and challenged him to a game. He laughed and turned me down. I think he was afraid I would beat him hands down.”
“I’d never heard of it before I came here,” Min admitted.
She was lining up her men when he said in a mumbling, self-conscious voice, “You know what, you weren’t a foundling. You were a lostling. Then along came Jess and found you. Your lucky day.”
Min had no answer ready for this, so she simply nodded.
They played a couple of games before Jess came in. She offered to take them both on, but Min’s finger was too sore to keep playing. She sat and watched and, as she did, she realized that neither of them had said a single word to Jess about a little lost dog called Daisy. Min still could not face the knowledge. Maybe Miss Hazlitt was all adjusted to doing without Daisy. She hadn’t had her all that long, anyway.
She held Cassie close and knew it was not that easy to lose a beloved dog. If Cassie was stolen from her tomorrow, the loss would leave a jagged hole inside her, a hole Emily could not fill, even though Cassie had not been hers for as long as Daisy had been Miss Hazlitt’s.
They would have to tell. She had known it all along. But maybe Miss Hazlitt would want them to keep Emily now that she had such a good home. Min held onto the hope with the same tenacity with which she clung to her braid.
And they needn’t tell tonight.
She willed herself to switch off her uncomfortable thoughts and sleep. But she woke at midnight to hear car horns blowing and church bells in the distance. A new year had begun. She sat staring out at the snowy night and then she laughed.
Next year could never match the one just past for excitement, she thought. I resolve to …
But her eyes closed again and she made no New Year’s resolution at all.
14
A New School
“MY MOTHER’S COMING BACK TOMORROW,” Toby grumbled on New Year’s morning. “She reminded me, on the phone, that school is about to start up again.”
Min had forgotten about school. It had been almost two weeks since she had gone to Mrs. Willis’s office with Enid Bangs.
And so much had happened in the meantime. She had a totally new life. Must she ruin it with school?
“Sybil asked me if you want to stay in the school you’ve been attending,” Jess said. “But I have a feeling you might like to make a fresh start there too. Am I right?”
Min gaped at her. How had Jess guessed how miserable she was at school? Then it dawned on her that she had never spoken of any girls, that she had never phoned anyone or asked to have a friend over. She supposed it hadn’t been all that hard for a smart woman to figure out.
Up till he moved, Laird had always been the one who started the name-calling, but there were others who had followed his lead.
“The Throwaway Stray,” Dawn Rushton had sneered once. “Why would we want her on our team?”
Most of the others had ignored this. They had ignored Min too. As a rule, they had behaved as though she were invisible or as though she were in the way.
Once Mrs. Willis had asked her about friends and, when Min growled that she had none and didn’t want any anyway, she had said, “Most people make friends with people who look friendly. Could you be holding them at arm’s length? Have you tried smiling?”
Min had been infuriated. She remembered the week last October, when a new girl had moved into the neighbourhood. Min had liked the look of her. For one thing, she had had a longish braid that began on the crown of her head and dangled down her back. Meredith, her name was. And she had come from England. But before Min had had a chance to get to know her, the others had guided her away and whispered Min’s shameful history. At least, Min supposed that was what they were whispering about. Afterwards, Meredith had hung out with Beth and Asmira.
Who cares? Min said to her bruised self. She had not lost Meredith’s friendship, because she had never had it. She had just hoped. Once or twice, during November, she had caught Meredith looking at her, and once she thought she had even seen her smile, but Min had closed that door out of loneliness and was not about to risk trying to open it again.